I would describe your collective board game preferences as āelegant, without player boards,ā but then one could enter an endless semantic argument about what constitutes an individual player board. And there are clear exceptions. Grand Austria Hotel, The Princes of Florence, and Puerto Rico all have player boards and I would describe your general view of those games as āfavorableā.
Itās really difficult to nail down a āGeeknights doctrine,ā even using your own criteria from the end of this episode.
Games I would consider āexploratoryā high-interaction low-politics games with deep emergent outcomes resulting from elemental rules (Food Chain Magnate) are viewed unfavorably because they also contain explicitly designed sharp edges that produce surprising outcomes for first-time players (milestones). Tigris & Euphrates is fraught with surprises for new players, and you could play 10 times and learn some new emergent interaction every time, but is perhaps the most Geeknights game imaginable. And if you think itās attributable to Knizia elegance, keep in mind that there are special rules to handle external conflicts between priests, tile placements that simultaneously create monuments and external conflicts, and timing concerns involving treasures, merchants, and conflicts.
Speaking of Food Chain Magnateā¦ economic snowballs are viewed unfavorably, but Saint Petersburg is a modern classic (and what is Saint Pete, if not the most interesting pure economic snowball ever produced by HiG?)
āKnowledge of the deckā and ādozens of unique cardsā are frequently criticized, but they go unmentioned in a casual review of Race for the Galaxy despite being front and center in the gameās design. Perhaps the role selection is so strong and interesting on its own that you barely notice when you subconsciously absorb the attributes shared by UPLIFT cards and the interactions created by Contact Specialist, Colony Ship, and Rebel Stronghold.
āSquishy communication rulesā are a classic criticism (Battlestar Galactica) but these are part and parcel with card games. Every partnership game (Bridge of courseā¦ Euchre too) has squishy communication rules. The Grizzled (reviewed positively) has squishy communication rules. Hanabi implicitly disallows players from adopting conventions (eg. āI will always discard the oldest card in my handā) in its communication rulesā¦ and then, realizing that it cannot reasonably do this, excuses itself from its own rule in the same paragraph! The rule becomes a guideline for the mindset one should adapt while playing. Hanabi was praised on the podcast for being a cooperative game with clear rules surrounding communication, and every group I have ever played with tries to create similar conventions between hands.
All to sayā¦ I still basically pick blindly when I bring games I think you might review positively to PAX. Iām honestly shocked Scott liked 1846 enough to play it again, and Iām similarly shocked Rym disliked Jump Drive because of the physical act of cumulatively scoring each round of a 5 minute game (an action I had quickly acclimated to). Yaāll are full of surprises